


A Thing Worth Doing

by shadowen



Series: Line of Sight [2]
Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: First Date, Fluff, Humor, M/M, Maybe a little angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-08
Updated: 2012-10-08
Packaged: 2017-11-15 22:23:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,835
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/532420
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shadowen/pseuds/shadowen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Anything worth doing is worth doing right, it just takes a few tries to get there.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Thing Worth Doing

**Author's Note:**

> Follow-up to [Fifty Pound Draw](http://archiveofourown.org/works/463849), because Phil did make a promise.
> 
> Thanks to [sabinelagrande](http://archiveofourown.org/users/sabinelagrande) and [coffeesuperhero](http://archiveofourown.org/users/coffeesuperhero) for the beta.

To say that Phil didn’t date much would be an understatement of almost criminal magnitude. Even if the nightmarish schedule of life with SHIELD hadn’t been a factor, the security logistics of even finding potential romantic partners were enough to make the whole idea impractical. 

He knew of a second tier security technician who’d met an FBI agent on a joint operation. The location of their wedding had been level three classified.

As a result, he was a little out of practice, but he was a firm believer that, if a thing was worth doing, it was worth doing right. And this strange and fragile thing with Barton - with Clint - was definitely worth doing right.

He made the reservations a month in advance. He picked out exactly the right outfit and set it aside so that it would be clean and ready. He studied the restaurant’s menu until he had determined the very best combination of courses, which wine to choose, and what to recommend if Barton - if Clint - asked. A week out from the projected operation, Phil steeled himself for the final and most difficult phase of preparation.

“Would you like to have dinner with me?”

Clint looked up, startled, even as he loosed the arrow in his hand. It sailed neatly down the range and met the bullseye with a distant thud while Clint fixed Phil with a puzzled stare.

“What?”

Since the botched mission in Colombia, the state of things between them had been... tenuous. There had been touches, kisses, glances, and Phil found himself folding his hands to keep from reaching out. He found himself staring into space over a stack of paperwork, distracted by the memory of Clint’s voice, but he wouldn’t rouse himself from the office to go in search of the reality.

“I want...” he began, but Clint’s eyes were so clear and sharp and the words faltered. “I want you to have dinner with me. Friday night.”

Clint lowered his bow and gave Phil the benefit of his full, focused attention. “What, like a date?”

“Yes, like a date.” This was a thing worth doing, and it was worth doing right.

Unexpectedly, Clint grinned brightly. “You gonna take me somewhere nice, sir?”

“That was the plan,” Phil replied, smiling back. “I already have reservations.”

Clint snorted. “That seems a little presumptuous. You expect me to put out, too?”

“Honestly, I’d thought that would be a third or fourth date sort of thing,” Phil said, and he absolutely did not blush. “But I won’t object to a preview.”

Clint’s laugh was bright and loud, and the leering smirk he gave Phil seemed to warm the air around him. “Let’s see how dinner goes,” he said. “Then we can talk about dessert.”

Dinner, as it turned out, was a disaster.

It didn’t occur to Phil until they arrived that a three-star restaurant might not be the best choice for a first date with a career sniper who’d probably never eaten anywhere that cost more than the cash in his pocket and who, Phil realized, probably didn’t own more than five sets of clothes, three of which were issued by SHIELD.

The closer they came to the door, the deeper Clint shoved his hands into his pockets. He hunched his shoulders and eyed everything from the maitre’d to the ceiling panels with guarded suspicion. Admittedly, Clint looked out of place in his jeans and black t-shirt, but Phil had learned that the best way to blend in was to act like you belonged, so he kept his own shoulders square and pinned a smile on his face.

He’d asked for a quiet, romantic table, which turned out to be a terrible idea. They were led to a small booth in a secluded corner where a wall blocked sightlines to the exits and one of them would be forced to sit with his back to a window. Clint seemed two seconds from bolting, but Phil was determined to soldier on. Out of courtesy, he took the seat facing away from the window. Clint dropped down opposite him and looked like nothing so much as a teenager in the back of a squad car, sullen and panicked.

Phil was sure things could hardly get worse until the waiter started asking about wines and appetizers, and he engaged on instinct, suddenly realizing he knew absolutely nothing about what Clint liked, as Clint himself just sat lower and lower in his seat. Satisfied with Phil’s selection, the waiter turned to Clint and asked, “And for you, sir?”

Clint stared down at his elaborate place setting and mumbled flatly, “I don’t drink. Thanks.”

Of course. Of course he didn’t drink, and Phil should have known that. Phil was beginning to feel more and more like he was going need _several_ drinks to get through this, but now he was going to have to sit there sipping overpriced wine like a jackass while Clint had water. The waiter nodded and beat a discreet retreat. 

“I’m sorry. I didn’t realize,” Phil said, and it sounded so lame and disingenuous, he immediately wished he hadn’t apologized at all.

Clint just shrugged, offering half of a thin smile. “No big deal. It’s just a thing.”

Just a thing, but, for Clint, it was a thing worth doing. Phil looked away and took a swallow of his wine. It tasted bitter.

“Nice place,” Clint remarked. “Fancy.”

Phil cleared his throat. “I guess it’s a little, uh... pretentious.”

Clint gave him a sly smile, truer than before. “I was gonna go with ‘snooty’,” he said, and Phil couldn’t help but cough out a laugh.

“Sorry. I didn’t.... I guess I thought that....” Phil wanted to do this right, but he didn’t know what _right_ was. “Maybe you should pick the second date,” he admitted.

This time, Clint really did smile, that cutting grin that Phil spent so much of his time looking forward to. “You’re pretty optimistic about this whole operation.”

Phil arched an eyebrow. “Are you planning to play hard to get?”

“Oh, no, sir. Wouldn’t dream of it, sir.”

He wanted to kiss that grin right off of Clint’s mouth, wanted to trace the laugh lines on his face, wanted to smooth away the edge of tension in his shoulders and give him one night of soft, sweet rest.

Later, Phil would think that the sudden buzzing of his phone had probably saved him from saying something horrendously sentimental. At the time, he just cursed it silently and answered.

There was a crisis, obviously, and they needed Phil, obviously, and also Clint, apparently, to come in and help save the day. Phil desperately hoped that there would come a day when people with more money than sense stopped buying strange technology just because it was shiny. On that day, he decided, he would retire.

“Duty calls?” Clint asked.

“So it would seem,” Phil sighed. “I’m s-”

“If you say you’re sorry, Coulson, I swear to god I will punch you.” Clint stood, jerking his head toward the exit. “Now let’s get outta here before that waiter comes back. He gives me the creeps.”

As first dates went, Phil reflected, it could have been worse, but only if it had ended with one of them dead or injured. Granted, the night did end with Clint gritting his teeth over a dislocated shoulder and Phil’s head throbbing in the aftermath of a mild concussion, but that had nothing to do with the date.

Phil gave it a week to let the dust settle and to make sure his head injury wouldn’t lead him to do something especially stupid. He’d seen even less of Clint than usual and eventually tracked him down in the scaffolding above the training area, folded up with a tablet computer and headphones turned up so loud that Phil could hear the vague echo of music. When he pulled them off, a few seconds of sound took the unexpected shape of pounding, emphatic piano.

“Before you say it,” Clint headed him off. “Yes, I know I’m not supposed to be up here, and no, I don’t care.”

He really wasn’t, but Phil could see the appeal of hiding in high, quiet places where few people could follow. “If I reported you, you’d still be right back up there, tomorrow.”

“Probably, yeah.”

“I won’t waste the paper, then.” Phil cleared his throat. “I wanted to ask you.... I know the first date was....”

“Mercifully interrupted by large-scale violence?”

“... _Underwhelming_ , but I was hoping....”

“Yes.”

“Yes?”

Clint rolled his eyes. “Whatever you’re asking or hoping or hemming and hawing over, the answer is yes. Whatever you want. Yes.”

“Oh.” Phil was out of practice vis a vis dating, but he’d thought there was supposed to be some negotiation, at least. “Well, I still think you should decide the next one.”

“You did alright,” Clint said, grinning. “It’s like you were trying to impress me, or something.”

“If I was trying to impress you, I’d show you the security protocols on my apartment.” And what did it say about Phil that he’d fallen in love with a man who was more interested in biometric passcodes than fine dining? “What I’m trying to do is establish the foundation of what I hope will be an emotionally satisfying long-term relationship.”

“Oh.” Clint shifted in his perch. “I don’t know. I mean.... We could go to the movies. That’s a normal date thing, right?”

Phil hadn’t been to the movies since.... He remembered something about men in suits and aliens that he’d been dragged to see because Fury thought it was hilarious. “That sounds... nice. Friday?”

“Yeah, sure. I’ll see what’s playing.”

“Good. Wonderful.” Phil smiled, a small, pleased fluttering in his stomach. This could work, he could do things right and this strange, fragile feeling could be real and solid. “Friday, then.”

He turned to go, but Clint said suddenly, “You’re really serious about this, aren’t you?”

Clint was looking down at him with an expression at once guarded and hopeful, and Phil could almost see his heart pinned open on his chest. “Yes, I am.”

“Okay. Good.” Clint grinned, a flash of the brightness that Phil had seen cut through so much dark. “See you Friday.”

Phil expected a glossy cineplex, an obscene amount of popcorn, and some mindless film of one genre or another. Action, maybe. Some agents Phil knew watched action movies the way hospital staff watched medical dramas, and Clint seemed the type. One day, Phil reflected, he would learn to forestall expectations where Clint Barton was concerned.

The theatre had seen better days, but it had been lovingly kept in the meantime. The threadbare red carpet was clean, and the glass poster covers shone against freshly painted walls, sporting images from films long since established in the canon of popular media. In lieu of popcorn and soda, Clint presented him with a hot dog and a cold bottle of pale beer, taking a matching hot dog and bottled root beer for himself. There were a handful of other patrons scattered throughout, but most of the seats were empty. 

As they settled in, Phil remarked, “I wouldn’t have pegged you for the German art cinema type.”

“Are you kidding?” Clint said around a mouthful of hot dog. “This movie’s a classic. It’s the original sci-fi mindfuck. Without this, you got no cyberpunk, no _Matrix_ , nothing. Have you seen it?” Phil shook his head, and Clint grinned. “You’re gonna love it.”

He was right. Or, at least, Phil loved the first hour of it.

Clint kept whispering quietly to him, points of interest and commentary, and they’d leaned in toward each other until their shoulders were pressed together, sharing the armrest between them. He could feel the heat and muscles of Clint’s arm through his sleeve, and he was just starting to relax into the contact and the easy rhythm of Clint’s voice when a distant explosion rattled the walls.

There was a single, still moment in which they shared a look of grim resolve, then both their phones went off at once.

Hydra agents attempting to bomb a SHIELD base was normally what Phil liked to call “Tuesday”, but this particular scuffle went very badly very quickly. Phil spent the better part of the next week in the confines of a mission control room, coordinating efforts to track down the few culprits who’d managed to escape.

Clint was suspended from field duty with a sprained knee and seemed to spend most of his time entertaining Phil’s control team, bringing Phil coffee and food, and generally being helpful, all while waving his crutch around and complaining loudly and at length about Hydra, the medical staff, boredom, and the fact that the room was starting to smell like “the snack table at a week-long D-and-D tournament”. Fury checked in on the operation and, after five minutes, told Clint to sit down and shut up or risk a transfer to the research station in Topeka. 

“As a test subject,” Fury specified.

Clint stole Phil’s chair and sat doodling on spare piece of paper until Fury left, at which point he observed in an undertone to Phil, “He doesn’t like me, does he?”

“He doesn’t like anyone. Except me,” Phil replied. “You know, you don’t technically have clearance to be in here.”

“So kick me out,” Clint said, flashing a grin. He held up the paper he’d been drawing on. “Have you looked at the hardware store?”

The spare paper turned out to be a list of businesses linked to a known Hydra cell. Next to a cartoon caricature of Fury yelling, Clint had circled the name “Handy Harry’s Hardware” and an address. 

“Dead end,” Phil told him. “It’s a front they used once or twice to move money.”

Clint nodded and leaned back in the chair, folding his hands behind his head. “Thing about hardware stores, though. Awful lot of supplies lying around. Stuff you could use to make, I dunno, a couple of cheap bombs.”

Phil blinked. He turned and handed the paper to the agent at the nearest computer station. “Dig up everything we have on this place. Pay close attention to the employee and customer records, and look for any discrepancies between supply orders and inventory reports.”

He looked back at Clint, who just smiled placidly, spinning a pencil between his fingers.

They raided and shut down the Hydra cell three days later.

“Did you tell him you recommended him for the Avengers Initiative?”

Phil hesitated. “No. No, I haven’t mentioned the Initiative.”

“You should tell him,” Fury said. “ _Before_ you sleep with him.”

Phil leveled a glare at him. “For the sake of our friendship and professional rapport, please do not ever make any comments regarding my sex life _ever_ again.”

“You invited comment when you decided your sex life was going to involve one of my agents.”

“Fair enough,” Phil admitted, frowning. “It’s possible.... It’s possible that was a poor decision.”

He’d seen Fury smack agents for stupidity on a number of occasions, and never, in his experience, had it been undeserved. So Phil felt the full meaning when the director’s hand connected solidly with the back of his head.

“I look forward to eventually figuring out what the hell you see in that jackass, assuming he lives that long. But you see something, and that’s good enough for me.” Fury gave him a hard look. “So stop being an idiot and for fuck’s sake go get laid.”

What he saw in Clint was sharp eyes in the dark, a steady hand on his wrist, a quick wit and a bright laugh, and it occurred suddenly to Phil that he was stalling. “I... think I’m going to take the night off.”

Fury grinned and clapped him on the shoulder. “I expect a full report on my desk tomorrow. I wanna know how Agent Barton might do working _under cover_.”

“You’re a jerk, sir,” Phil replied mildly.

Fury just kept grinning and strolled away chuckling. “Have a good night, Coulson.”

Phil resisted the urge to roll his eyes and pulled out his phone. “My apartment. Two hours,” he told Clint without preamble.

“ _Um, okay. What’s up?_ ”

“Date night,” Phil said. “We’re doing this right.”

He was altogether too aware that life was too unpredictable to make many promises, but he’d made one to Clint. Just one. It was time to keep it.

Clint was already lounging on the front steps when Phil walked up, arms loaded with paper bags. The sun had sunk down to trail the roof tops, and the slanting light glinted on Clint’s hair and cast his bright eyes into shadow beneath his brow. He looked loose and relaxed, but Phil could read the tension in his shoulders and the way his fingers curled around the bar of his crutch. The sudden change of plans had surprised him, Phil knew, and Clint hated surprises.

“Did you get me a present, sir?” he asked, taking one of the bags.

“That depends,” Phil replied. “Do you deserve a present?”

“Well, I did help you catch a bunch of terrorists,” Clint pointed out, which was true enough.

Phil hadn’t spent much time at home in the past week, and his apartment still bore signs of the rushed preparations for their abbreviated movie date and the one brief stop he’d made to pick up fresh clothes. There was a basket of clean laundry sitting untouched by the kitchen table and one dish in the sink that looked well on it’s way to sprouting sentient life.

“I, uh, haven’t had a chance to clean.”

Clint shrugged. “Mess is good. Mess means it’s lived-in.”

Phil wondered if Clint’s quarters were messy, if he even owned enough to make a mess, if he left things lying around just so the spartan space would look like a home. “I don’t live in it as much as I’d like,” he said, “but such is the nature of SHIELD.”

“Must be nice, though,” Clint remarked. “Knowing it’s here.”

“It is,” Phil said, because it was and because he didn’t know what else to say. He had his empty, messy, well-secured apartment for the days between crises when the job was a crushing weight on his shoulders, and Clint had no escape but the high, quiet places in the scaffolding where no one else could follow.

“So what’s on the agenda?” Clint asked, setting the bag down and saving Phil from that unfortunate line of thought. “‘Cause I’ve got some really interesting guesses as to what’s in those bags.”

Phil gave him a smile and starting pulling his spoils out of the bags. The pint of blueberry gelato went into the freezer for later, and Clint eyed it with considerable interest. Two bottles of root beer were set aside, and the rest of the six pack went into the refrigerator. Finally, Phil pulled out a pair of heavy aluminum take-out trays, handing one to Clint.

The smell of butter and rare beef wafted up, and Clint gave him a curious glance before pulling back the lid of the tray. Stuffed to bursting inside the aluminum plate were a perfectly seared steak, oozing juices, and a large, bright red lobster tail, pink flesh flesh flaring through the split in the shell. Clint looked up at him in astonishment. 

“I did promise you steak and lobster, didn’t I?” Phil said, and Clint laughed.

“Yeah. Yeah, you did.”

“I keep my promises, and I don’t make promises I can’t keep,” he told Clint. “I can’t promise that I will always be around, and I _can_ promise that I will, on occasion, make a terrific ass of myself because interpersonal relationships are a well-documented weak point in my skill set.” He took a deep breath and pressed on. “There’s also something you should know about why you were assigned to the mission in Colombia.”

Clint dropped his gaze, and Phil was steeling himself for an impossibly awkward conversation when Clint looked up again and said, “It was a test.”

He really would have to start suspending his expectations one day. “How did you know that?”

Clint’s shoulders rolled, somewhere between a shrug and a movement to shake away the memories of rain and blood. “Made sense. Don’t know what the test was for, but nobody’s tried to kill me in my sleep, so I guess I passed.”

Passed and kept going and lapped the rest of them, Phil thought. “I recommended you for inclusion in a specialized team of uniquely skilled assets tasked to deal with extraordinary threats.”

“Aaaw, you’re so sweet. Is this because I saved your ass from the scary torturing guy?”

“It’s because you deserve it,” Phil said seriously, and Clint’s grin flickered. “The initiative is classified, so I can’t tell you anything else, but I’m confident you’ll be called up when the team assembles.”

Clint cleared his throat. “That’s an awful lot of faith, sir.”

“You won’t disappoint me.” Phil held Clint’s eyes and went on. “I’m telling you this because I believe in full disclosure, and to... apologize. The mission was supposed to be a field test, to see how you’d follow orders away from traditional constraints. It was never.... If I had any idea the situation would escalate so quickly, I never would have put you at risk. I’m sorry.”

To his surprise, Clint laughed. “Are you taking credit for the sudden outbreak of political violence in a foreign country?” he asked wryly. “Jesus, Coulson, I knew you were a badass, but that’s pushing it.”

Phil opened his mouth and closed it again, not entirely sure what to say to that. “Well, I’m sorry, all the same.”

“I’m not,” Clint said. “I mean, stabbing, car crashes, torture, getting shot, and nearly dying aside, I think things turned out alright.”

“It’s both impressive and troubling that you are so blasé about mortal peril.”

“I don’t care why I was there or what went wrong or what kind of super secret hero squad I’m supposed to join,” Clint ignored him and went on. “And I don’t want date nights and fancy dinners. I’m not asking you to make promises or love me or pretend this is ever gonna be anything other than fucked up. I just....” He took a deep breath, and Phil thought that Clint had probably learned well never to ask anyone for anything. “Just give me what you can and don’t lie to me. That’s all I want.”

Phil didn’t say that he wanted to make promises and to love him and that fucked up was perfect as long as they were in it together. He just said, “I can do that,” and Clint smiled.

“Well, okay then.” Clint fished a set of plastic cutlery out of the bag and sawed off an inappropriately sized bite of steak, stuffing it into his mouth with a grin. “Oh my god, that’s amazing.”

Phil smiled back at him. “Good to know I did something right.”


End file.
